by E. M. Moore
We all stand still as he walks down the short stone pathway toward us. The drivers plunk our luggage next to us as the alpha approaches. “Welcome back to Daybreak,” he says with a hint of a smile. Other than that, he’s not overly friendly or welcoming. He’s staccato and relaying information like he’s on a mission. “This cabin is for my hunting accommodations. Due to the Winter Solstice festivities, all the rooms in the big house are taken with other pack visitors, so I hope you don’t take this as an offense.”
I swallow. I had taken it as an offense, but I suppose he’s right. However, he’s not addressing the fact that we could’ve just stayed with our parents. If I’d felt like arguing with my mother, I already would’ve texted her.
“Thank you, Alpha,” Alice says.
“You’re welcome. Every day, an announcement will be left in your cabin about the day’s Winter Solstice festivities, which, as you know, ends with the winter ball. I hope you’ll all be attending with your fated pairs.”
“So, are we free to come and go from this house?” Nathan asks. I peer around the place, searching for something that would get us out of here since it’s a long trek back to the alpha’s mansion and an even longer one to get to our family homes. We’ll have to wolf it everywhere.
“Of course,” he says. “You’re still a member of Daybreak Pack, and I have high hopes that I’ll welcome all of you back for good soon.”
The four other Greystone students nod, and I find myself nodding along with them. There’s something about his voice that makes you want to agree with him. It’s the pack bond talking, for sure. I haven’t felt it in a very long time.
“Thank you, Alpha,” we all say as the lead driver opens up the rear door for him. He gets in, and the alpha’s vehicles pull away, our pieces of luggage standing on either side of the rutted roadway.
“Some welcoming,” I mutter.
Now that the alpha is gone, my thoughts are my own again.
Nathan grabs my bag, even though I protest, and we walk behind the other three into the cabin. On second inspection, it’s not like he put us up in a shitty house made for animals. The cabin, though rustic, is beautiful. The screened-in front porch is equipped with a dining and seating area. A fireplace splits the two, and you can see right through to the table on the other side. Robbie pushes the door to the cabin open, and we walk into the interior.
The space is on the smaller side, but it has all we need. At this point, anything would look small to me compared to Greystone. To our right, a cozy living room sits with a sectional sofa and a few recliners. Further in, we brush past an island lined with barstools. The kitchen itself boasts dark green cabinets with black marble countertops and appliances that appear to have never been used before.
I should’ve realized the alpha wouldn’t live in squalor, even if this is only a hunting lodge.
“Let’s pick rooms,” Nathan offers.
We trudge our luggage upstairs. The rooms are tiny except for one. Alice calls it first, running straight in and making herself comfortable. I want to tell her to calm her tits, but I don’t want to seem too over the top, so I let her enthusiasm slide. The other girl asks if she can room there, too, as there aren’t enough bedrooms to go around, and Alice reluctantly agrees. While Robbie takes the room down the same hallway, Nathan and I turn to our left where we find two more doors. He shrugs as he opens one, and I skirt past him, grabbing my luggage and moving to the door at the farthest end of this hallway.
The room is nice—smaller than my room at Greystone, but at least this one is decorated better. I start opening up doors and find a closet behind the first and a Jack and Jill bathroom on the other side of the second. Nathan opens the opposite door at the same time and chuckles when he sees me. “I guess we’re sharing.”
Shrugging, I try to play off his nearness, but a muscle in my stomach tightens. I really hope this won’t be weird. Gesturing toward the room between us, he asks, “Do you...need to use it?”
I shake my head. “Be my guest.”
I step away, attempting to close the door behind me, when Nathan sticks his hand out to block it. “We should talk strategy soon.”
The hairs on the back of my neck stand, and I turn slowly. “Sean and I aren’t your fight,” I say as nicely as possible. “You need to worry about yourself.”
The creases in his forehead deepen as he glares at me. “I’m only giving them one chance before I go on the offensive. I’ll do whatever it takes to make sure you’re not sent Feral, Mia.”
“One chance?” I counter. “You know that’s not enough. We have a year’s worth of shit to work through.”
“We can’t wait too long,” he growls back.
“Just focus on seducing Gayle,” I snap.
He reels back like I hit him. My heart pounds in my chest. Unsure of where that outburst came from, I cross my arms in front of my chest, not backing down. No matter where it came from, it’s the truth. He needs to worry about Gayle, and I need to worry about Sean. Separating them while we’re here should be a priority for us.
“Fine,” Nathan grinds out before slamming the door closed between us.
I sigh and throw myself back on the single bed. The mattress creaks beneath my weight. I take my phone out of my pocket, bring up my mother’s number, hit the green call button, and hold the phone to my ear. She answers coolly, so I measure her even tone and sprinkle it through mine. “Hello, Mother. I just wanted to let you know that I’m at the alpha’s hunting cabin.”
“Ah, yes, they said they were going to have you stay there.”
The call is silent after that. Unease trickles through me. “I was wondering if I could come visit you and Dad. Maybe we can invite Sean over for dinner?”
“Sean? Did he agree?” she asks, excitement evident in her response.
“I haven’t asked him yet.”
“Oh,” she remarks. “Well, if he agrees, your father and I would be happy to host you both.”
“So, only if Sean agrees?”
“Mia,” my mother remarks with exasperation, “why do you have to be like this?”
“Mom, I haven’t seen you in a year. I’m not being like anything.”
She clicks her tongue. It’s a bad habit she’s done since I was a kid when she was annoyed with me. “You know how busy your father and I get around parties. I don’t know why you chose the Winter Solstice to come home, anyway.”
“Greystone sent me here. I didn’t ask for it.”
“Still, you’d think they would’ve asked us what we thought before they decided.”
I shake my head. She’s acting as if I’m away at some prestigious high school. “Fine. I won’t bother you, then.”
“Ugh, Mi—”
I don’t let her excuse get out before I hang up the phone. The door opens, and I peek up to find Nathan standing there, lips thinned. By the way he’s looking at me, I’m sure he heard all of that. “You don’t need them,” he says. “Focus on Sean. When you get him, your parents will go back to being normal.”
“Normal meaning they’re going to actually act as if they have a kid?”
“Yeah, something like that.”
“Oh, goodie,” I deadpan.
He sits on the edge of my bed. “I was about to text Gayle, telling her I wanted to see her, but I can’t get my fingers to do it. Here, switch phones with me.”
He doesn’t wait for me to respond before he shoves his phone in my hands and plucks mine away. His fingers fly over the keyboard. I sit up to see what he’s doing and find him writing Sean a text as me.
His phone sits like a lead weight in my hands. I trace my thumb over his screen. The phone brightens to life, and his screensaver picture makes me smile. It’s the view from the top of the little hill at Greystone. Feeling more grounded, I open his contacts, click on Gayle’s name, and then start typing. Hey, Gayle. I just got into Daybreak. I was hoping we could see each other?
I hand his phone back to him at the same time he offers me mine. I stare
down at the text he composed. Hi, Sean. I’m back, and I need to see you.
I raise an eyebrow. “Well, that’s direct.” I glance over to find him backspacing through my text. “Hey!”
“We can’t act like it’s an option,” he explains. “You won’t have an option when they run you out of the pack.”
Well, when he puts it like that, I send the text Nathan wrote out for me. I used to text Sean a lot, but as time dragged on and more and more messages didn’t get answers, I stopped sending them. Currently, I’ll only ask him if he plans on coming to the mandatory meetings, which he answers with one word. Yes.
“Okay, ready to hit send?” Nathan asks. I glance over and realize he’s holding his thumb over the screen, jaw ticking. Several seconds go by, and he doesn’t move. I reach over and hit the Send button for him. He stills when the message says it’s going through, but then he peers over. “Thanks, I needed that.”
“There,” I tell him. “Now we wait.”
“Now we wait,” he echoes.
Nathan, however, doesn’t have to wait long. His phone vibrates in his hand a moment afterward. A pang of jealousy hits me, and I try to decipher whether it’s jealousy over Gayle returning his text first or the fact that she’s actually writing him at all.
“What did she say?”
“She says...” he licks his lips, “she can meet me tonight.”
“That’s...good,” I tell him.
“Yeah,” he mutters and stands, shoving his phone into his pocket. He doesn’t look back when he disappears into the bathroom and then closes his bedroom door behind him, leaving me alone. I sink onto the bed, already exhausted, and we only just returned to Daybreak.
A scream comes from somewhere down the hall. I jump out of bed, throw my door open, and step out into the hallway to find Alice. “My mate agreed to meet me.” She’s smiling from ear to ear, and her excitement is palpable.
“That’s great,” I tell her.
“Yeah,” Nathan agrees. He also must have run out of the room as soon as she screamed.
I take a deep breath and let it out, wondering if Sean is going to be the only one of our collective other halves who doesn’t agree to meet with me. The Sean I know keeps his phone on him all the time.
“You guys should come down here,” Robbie calls out.
Alice bounds down the stairs. Nathan and I follow, but he doesn’t so much as look at me. We maneuver next to Robbie, who’s standing near the island. He points out a white sheet of paper. “This must be the announcement sheet that Alpha Richard was talking about.”
I glance at the sheet of paper, which is formatted like a schedule, complete with Daybreak Pack letterhead.
Tonight, there’s a pack meeting discussing finalizing the Winter Solstice plans. No doubt my mother will be going to that. She loves to have her hands in the Daybreak socialite offerings.
My phone buzzes in my pocket, and I’m almost afraid to look at it. I have so much riding on this trip to Daybreak that it seems like every move I make should be calculated and thought through.
I turn, slipping my phone out. My heart crashes against my chest when I see that it’s a text from Sean. The tug in my heart starts again, and my wolf’s ears perk up. She’s as nervous as I am, but I have no doubt that as soon as she gets in Sean’s presence again, she’s going to have hearts for eyes. No matter how much our human minds try to get in the way, our wolves will feel the pull more acutely. At least, that’s my experience.
That’s probably a good idea.
Probably a good idea?
I don’t like basing my future on probably. When? I text back.
Working until 6. You want to meet me after?
Sure.
Everything I know about Sean now, I’ve only gleamed from the mandatory meetings. We don’t talk on the phone, we don’t call each other to see how our day is going. I only found out that he works for the pack’s legal office during one of our forced share times. In Greystone, I’m hardly ever doing anything fascinating, so I usually talk about my classes. Sean, however, took a few college courses, found out he really liked law, and is now job shadowing.
The old Mia would ask him where, but I think this new Mia is just going to show up at his work unless he tells me a place to meet him ahead of time.
I push my phone into my back pocket and turn to find Nathan’s stare devouring me. He lets me see him watching me, and then he turns away, jogging up the stairs and disappearing.
I don’t know what Nathan and I are when we’re on Daybreak grounds. I guess some things are easier at Greystone Academy.
10
The chill in the air barely touches me. It’s a shifter superpower. We hardly ever need coats to keep warm because we have full-fledged wolf DNA hidden inside us. Despite what I initially thought when we rolled onto the alpha’s grounds, we’re not imprisoned in the cabin. Everyone has left at some point today—some to see their families, others to check in with their mates like I’m getting ready to do.
I slip my shirt over my head, bundling it neatly in the backpack I brought. It’s a shifter’s best friend. I’ll pack everything in here, then when I get to the edge of town, I’ll shift back into my human form, get dressed, and continue on like nothing happened.
My wolf is eager to get out and run on these grounds. She hasn’t done it since the night of our first shift.
I unclasp my bra, tucking it away neatly before slipping my panties off last. Once I’m fully naked, I quicken my pace. As shifters, you’re bound to see some skin, but I don’t make a habit of changing slowly either. Zipping the bag, I leave it at my feet, and then mentally move myself to the back as my wolf claws forward, ready to make her appearance.
She’s so happy during the shift that I almost don’t feel the twist of muscles and snap of bones as my body rearranges itself into its new form. The first time I shifted, it fascinated the shit out of me. Sure, I’d seen others do it, but I couldn’t fathom how my body would do the same. It was so nerve-racking. I honestly thought I was going to be a dud, but that day was beyond anything I could’ve imagined. I even got a mate out of it.
Well, for a whole ten seconds until Gayle keened so loudly I thought someone died.
I shake my head. Her howl had stopped me in my tracks, and I hate to even think of it now. It reminds me of my own pain. What she’d felt, I felt a split second after when Sean turned his back on me. I’ve often wondered who hurt more: The girl who had him when they were human? Or the mate that fate paired him with? I suppose there’s not a scale for grief.
Once in my wolf skin, I don’t feel the cold at all. Daybreak lives up in the mountains, so it’s several degrees cooler than Greystone Academy. If you look carefully, all the Daybreak shifters have a thicker coat than the others.
Being in my wolf while she’s in control is pretty cool. It’s like sitting in the passenger seat of a vehicle. Sometimes, I find myself wanting to pump the brakes, but with shifter abilities comes shifter skills. My wolf dodges trees, leaps over brush, and stretches her legs without even making herself work too hard.
Despite never fully exploring this area of Daybreak before—human or wolf—I find the edge of the city easily with my superior sense of smell. Sean’s work happens to sit kitty-corner from a chocolate shop, so I homed in on that aroma as I made my way here. Now that I’m this close, it’s super potent. My wolf’s nose wrinkles. She’d rather eat raw steaks.
She drops the bag behind the tree and lies down on her stomach. As soon as she places her head on the floor between her pawed feet, we start to shift. It comes much easier now than it did when I first got to Greystone. That’s one thing I’ll always agree with Kinsey about. It’s not really fair to send newly shifted wolves away when they’re just getting used to their wolf bond. Of course, not every wolf who ends up at Greystone is a newbie. Sometimes, they’re made to wait until their fated pair shifts at a later date. Those cases are rare, though.
Bearing down on my jaw, I hold back the flash of searing
agony as I switch from one being to another. I let out a whoosh as soon as the shift is complete and then immediately get to work putting on the clothes I brought with me. I settle down once I have my bra and underwear on. If anyone were to spot me now, at least I’m wearing as much now as I would at a public pool.
My wolf and I have always been seamless companions. I’ve seen other shifters struggle against their true nature, so I guess I’m lucky to have found a partner rather than someone who wants to fight me on everything.
I stash the backpack to come back for it later. Sean never texted me again, so I have no doubt my sudden appearance will be a surprise to him. I check my phone one last time before I start off for the tree line. Nothing.
Nerves bottleneck inside my throat, pushing down into my chest until my heart rate picks up. I haven’t seen Sean in three weeks. Tuesday would’ve been a mandatory meeting, a meeting he most likely would’ve attempted to get out of using the solstice party as an excuse.
Every time I see him, it’s like a punch to the gut. It’s an attraction that isn’t reciprocated. I’ve often wondered if fate got it wrong, or if she only mated us on my side but not his. He never talks about a pull toward me. He never talks about a superpowered magnet that brings us together. In the year it’s been since fate paired us, we haven’t bonded as much as Kinsey and Jonah did and they were only mates for a few weeks.
I take a trail that leads from the woods to the sidewalk. Dirt-beaten paths like this exist all over town for the very reason why I’m using it. People run in their shifter forms and then end up near town, so these paths became a necessity for getting around.
Unconsciously, I smooth down my outfit. I’m wearing a simple pair of jeans and a forest green V-neck shirt. I have no idea what Sean’s plans are—if anything—so I went with casual. And yes, I totally bucked the system. If they want me to wear my Greystone uniform, they’re going to have to make me.